Name That Town : In Indiana, You May Find Popcorn, or Even a Surprise

Hoosiers can lay claim to more than the basketball and corn that comes from their homespun state.

It’s also a place of note for its many towns and hamlets with quaint names.

Consider, for example, such Indiana spots as Bacon, Bean Blossom, Buddha, Chili, Correct and Cumback.

Popcorn? “People have been nuts about popcorn 150 years and more in this town. That’s why they called it Popcorn in the early days,” said lifelong resident Oneita Burnette, 60, as she chewed on you know what.

There is a Popcorn church and a Popcorn cemetery, but the one-room Popcorn school, the Popcorn general store and Popcorn post office no longer exist.

Last Kernel in Popcorn

“I was the last farmer in Popcorn that growed popcorn. I quit in 1980,” noted Dale Rainbolt, 50, standing under a sign over his front door that proclaimed: “Hoosier Homestead Farm Owned By Same Family Over 100 Years. Indiana Historical Assn.”

Rainbolt said his farm “has been in my family since Andrew Jackson was President in 1830. They were eating and growing popcorn way back then in Popcorn, Ind.”

The biggest surprise in Surprise, Ind.?

It’s the sign pointing to tombstones in the local cemetery. Motorists always do a double take when they see it.

A sign at the Surprise Christian Church noted that pastor Larry Morris would preach on the topic, “Nothing Is Dirt Cheap Except Gossip,” at the next Sunday meeting.

Surprise farmer Elmer Grinstead, 79, recalled how he took a load of chicken and eggs to market in Indianapolis: “A cop directing traffic downtown saw the Surprise, Ind., sign on my truck and told me to pull over. ‘Now where in hell is Surprise?’ he asked me.”

In Mongo, Ind., at the Mongo Tavern, owners Wesley (Sarge) Frye, 70, and his wife, Loretta, 70, have insisted since 1963 that their customers stand daily--and sometimes even more often--to sing “God Bless America” with them.

“We sing ‘God Bless America’ several times a day in the tavern. We love America. That’s why we do it,” explained Sarge, a ringer for W.C. Fields with bulbous nose and red face. He was a gunner on a B-29 during World War II. That’s how he came by his nickname.

The Fryes are patriotic. Their home next door is painted red, white and blue. An American flag flies daily outside the tavern. On the Fourth of July and Veterans Day, they have patriotic celebrations at their establishment, serving free food to anyone who shows up.

Inside the bar is: a photo of Sarge’s B-29 and its 11-man crew, photos of B-29s dropping bombs over Tokyo (something that Sarge did), a “Proud to Be an American” sign and a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

The jukebox is World War II vintage and has Indiana records of record, like “Sunrise Serenade,” “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “White Cliffs of Dover,” “Always,” “Wabash Cannonball” and “Back Home in Indiana.”

Sarge rattles off what he calls Hoosier horse sense, like: “The greatest people I ever seen was in World War II.” Or: “I’m no better than the guy across the street as long as he gives me half the road.” And “This station is the best on earth, but we’re selling it down the drain.”

There are three towns in different parts of Indiana named Needmore.

In Park E County, Needmore was an old coal-mining town, named because pioneers often said, “We need more coal.”

In Needmore in Brown County, they needed more people in the beginning.

On the town’s outskirts is a sign posted on the lawn of an old home: “George Ray Fleener. Brown County teacher of the century. 1985.”

Fleener is now 95. He recently co-wrote a county history. He was named teacher of the century because he founded the Brown County School Board, introduced immunization to the county schools, initiated junior high schools locally and taught for 45 years in one-room log school houses in Needmore, Branstetter, Helmsburg, High Knob, Bear Creek, Cottonwood and Bean Blossom.

He was paid $240 the first year he taught in 1915.

Dubious Honor

At Needmore in Lawrence County, the late Merle Eddington received from William Proxmire, the former U.S. senator from Wisconsin, the Golden Fleece Award in 1979.

Eddington won the dubious distinction when he managed to get a $700,000 grant to build a replica of the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the old Empire Hole. Indiana limestone was mined from the hole to build the Empire State Building.

The idea was to have local stone cutters build the pyramid. They built the foundation, a museum and gate house. Then they ran out of money. The museum burned. Eddington died and his ashes were spread in Empire Hole.

Kokomo, Ind., was named after an Indian chief. Because of its catchy name and its history as an old vaudeville stop, more than 20 songs have been published about the town.

There is, for example, the tune “Kokomo, Ind.” from the Betty Grable-Dan Dailey film, “Mother Wore Tights.” There’s another popular, 1913 number called “I’ve Got a Gal in Kokomo.”

In the Beach Boys’ hit tune from the film “Cocktail,” Kokomo has been transplanted to a place “to get away from it all”--off in the Florida Keys.

For all its exotic allure, however, Florida would be pressed to match some of Indiana’s other intriguing town names. Like Gnaw Bone, which was “named after a dog gnawing on a bone,” insisted Gnaw Bone mayor Glen Roberts, 77, at the local sorghum mill.

Fickle, locals said, was named after a family of that name, not some capricious person.

As for another curiously named city, “Whenever I tell people I’m from Zulu they think I’m from some place in Africa,” said garage owner Dean Oberley, 32, a fourth-generation Zuluite.

The town, residents said, is named after the Zulu Indians, a tribe of Native Americans who since have disappeared.

The Name Game

Down the road from Zulu, Bobo was named after an Adams County judge, James Bobo.

Radioville, meantime, got its name from a ham radio operator. Windfall was named because tornadoes often sweep through, felling many trees. Sassafras got its name from its abundance of sassafras trees, while Solitude earned its title because it’s a quiet place.

Carolyn Johnson, 78, a fifth-generation Hoosier, said of her home town, which got its name from the sweet smelling hay in the area: “They always laugh when I tell them I’m from Aroma, Ind.”